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VA care extended to Camp Lejeune water victims

VA care extended to Camp Lejeune water victims

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jun 22, 2012 10:16:13 EDT

Congressional negotiators have taken a big leap in expanding veterans’ health care by proposing Veterans Affairs Department treatment for veterans and dependents exposed to contaminated well water at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Up to 750,000 people — Navy and Marine Corps members and their families — may have been exposed to water found to be contaminated by carcinogens from the 1950s into the 1980s.

North Carolina lawmakers have been pushing for years for the federal government to cover health costs for people who were exposed, but there have been sharp disagreements about who should be responsible: the Defense Department, which owned the base, or VA, which covers service-connected illness, injury and disability.

This is a big step because VA provides very little health care for dependents, concentrating on veterans rather than their families. But it is not unprecedented.

Those covered must have lived or worked on Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days from Jan. 1, 1957 through Dec. 31, 1987.

VA ends up with responsibility under terms of a compromise reached June 21 between members of the House and Senate veterans’ affairs committees on a comprehensive veterans bill made up of provisions that have passed at least one of the committees over the past two years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah….after I was sent that paperwork which all they wanted to know was about my Vietnam time and nothing about my time at LaJeune I decided not to fill it out. Vietnam had nothing to do with living at LaJeune which I was there for several months until I went to the Nam. All this is just another government invisible deal like many of there other deals.